This article opens with an overview of the current policy interest in "teacher leadership" with its particular challenges and opportunities. Teacher-leader interpretations based on standardized instructional management platforms grounded in neoliberalism are critically challenged. The referent for this critical questioning is a normative vision of teachers working as lead professionals for democratic ways of living. Eight key concepts guiding the collegial enactment of this vision are introduced, and the article concludes with the recognition that this understanding of teacher leadership is informed by a fluid, holistic hermeneutics that stands in contrast to value-neutral forms of technical rationality and dogmatic ideologies.